


Trust Me

by DeCarabas



Series: Fugitives Together [36]
Category: Dragon Age II
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-25
Updated: 2015-12-05
Packaged: 2018-04-28 04:01:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 8,318
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5076991
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DeCarabas/pseuds/DeCarabas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Trust and other issues between apostates, throughout the game and beyond.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Act One

The Antivan grocer by the docks has candied violets set out in front of the usual rows of spices, and Hawke thinks about the frilly Orlesian cakes that his mother was sighing over earlier that afternoon. It had been an odd walk back down the stairs to Lowtown, with her going back and forth between enthusing over his and Carver’s recovery of the will, then gnawing on her fingernail and worrying about the cost of renovations. She was a bit stung by the reminder that she couldn’t even afford Hightown’s overpriced cakes, never mind the upkeep on an estate like that.

He leaves the candied violets, but walks away from the stall with cinnamon and cloves and plans for compote. And through the crowd, he catches sight of distinctive feathered shoulders up ahead, hunched against the wind off the water.

Two heads turn toward him when he calls Anders’ name, Anders and Lirene wearing identical wary expressions as they scan the crowd. Anders visibly relaxes when he recognizes Hawke; but when Hawke reaches the place where they’d been standing, surrounded by the briny scent of the fishmongers’ stalls, Lirene’s already hurrying away.

“I’ve interrupted something,” he says to Anders by way of a greeting, watching her go. He wonders what they were talking about, wonders if there’s someone at her shop waiting for healing—he can’t remember ever seeing that shop without someone waiting for healing, come to think of it. But Anders doesn’t look concerned.

“Not really,” Anders says. “Nothing urgent.” He shifts his weight, stretching, and Hawke’s eyes follow the movement; and when he looks back at Anders’ face, Anders is watching him with a faint smile.

It’s unusual to see Anders topside this early, and the late afternoon sunlight makes him look paler than usual, picks out the shadows under his eyes that are easy to miss in the dim light of the underground. Too many nights letting the lantern burn late, sleeping through the morning. Darktown keeps its own hours.

On impulse, Hawke asks if he’s free for dinner. It feels too formal the moment the words are out of his mouth—feels like the open invitation should be taken for granted, the way it is with everybody else. Athenril’s crew had no qualms about barging in at all hours of the night to rouse their mage from his bed for a job, or crashing on the floor after a night at the Hanged Man, when their own beds just seemed too far to bother. It’s strange after a lifetime of believing that a household of apostates always had to keep their distance, never risking anyone dropping by without warning, seeing something they shouldn’t. Strange, but nice.

And yet, hypocritically, every time he sees Anders using magic in his clinic, in plain sight, it’s hard not to want to put a hand on his wrist and draw him safely away from that place where there are far too many witnesses, far too many unknown factors, any one of whom might turn him over to the templars if their desperation outweighs their gratitude. Anders lives so openly that it makes Hawke cringe.

Though he’s less and less sure whether he’s cringing at the risks Anders takes, or at himself, for not doing the same.

The small smile on Anders’ face doesn’t change at the invitation, but he gives a noncommittal answer, a few things he needs to take care of first. Vague. The kind of answer that doesn’t quite say _no,_ but that usually ends up with Hawke and Varric sitting around the Hanged Man, placing bets on whether Anders will actually show up this time. Hawke’s lost more coin than he’s won that way.

He’s pretty sure he should take that as a hint.

* * *

When he gets home, Merrill’s sitting cross-legged on the floor, talking more to the dog than to Carver, and the fire in the hearth is burning low. Gamlen’s nowhere to be seen, but that’s no surprise; he’s been avoiding the house since they found the will.

Hawke coaxes the fire up again with a spark from his fingers rather than tending it properly, and his mother tsks at him. But he’s smiling to himself as he straightens, blowing on his fingertips. It’s a silly risk to take, using magic for small things, but he likes it, likes having people around who won't be bothered by it.

He sets Carver to slicing garlic and bell peppers while he peels the shrimp he’d picked up at the docks. It’s been a while since they’ve had much of a meal—they all keep their own hours, and it’s usually easier to just catch as catch can; and both Carver and their mother's idea of cooking is limited to the Fereldan boil-until-uniformly-grey-and-tasteless style of food preparation. But he likes cooking, when he’s got the time for it. Reminds him of all the times he’d been left in charge of the twins back in Lothering.

He doesn’t realize how often he’s looking towards the door until Carver comments on it, and then he makes himself stop. But Carver’s still frowning at him.

“Do _all_ Dalish recipes involve insects?” Hawke says to Merrill while the shrimp’s sautéing, on the subject of food with too many legs, after Carver insists that Dalish cooking doesn’t sound that bad, really.

“No, not all of them. Don’t forget about all those stolen human children.”

Carver laughs a little too loud, and that just makes Merrill smile wider.

It’s easy, and it’s comfortable, and at the end of the night Anders still hasn’t shown.

* * *

It’s going past midnight when Merrill leaves, late enough that they volunteer to walk her back to the alienage, both him and Carver. He ignores Carver’s attempts to catch his eye and wave him off; thinks, but doesn’t say, that Merrill’s probably more capable of handling herself alone than Carver is, sense of direction aside. Some of the smaller gangs have been competing over the Sharps’ old territory between the alienage and Gamlen’s place, and he doesn’t need his brother getting caught in the middle on his way home.

He thinks of the look Anders gets whenever he talks about breaking up the gangs on the streets, the determined line of his mouth, and wonders if that comes from the spirit of justice side of him, or if he’s always been this willing to pick a fight. Neither one would surprise him.

On the walk back, he hesitates at the turn toward the alley that would take him to the clinic, and he can feel Carver’s eyes on him. He keeps walking.

“You need to stop… whatever it is you two are doing,” Carver says after a moment’s silence. “You know that, right?”

“No idea what you’re talking about.”

“I’m serious. Father and Bethany spent their whole lives fighting against that, and you just let him in.”

For a moment, this time he really does have no idea what Carver’s talking about. But then realization hits and he stops walking, takes hold of Carver by the arm to stop him too. “He’s _not_ an abomination,” he says, low enough to be certain they won’t be overheard.

Carver pulls away, rubbing at his arm. “Yeah. Sure. It's not like I've turned him in, have I? I know you think he’s some kind of miraculous solution. Just… don’t get your hopes up too high.”

Anders _is_ some kind of miraculous. The risk of possession that Hawke’s lived with his whole life doesn’t have to be a death sentence after all; Anders changes everything. But he folds his arms, staring at his brother until Carver looks away. “Afraid I’m going to invite a demon in?”

“Isn’t that what you’ve been doing?” Carver flinches the moment the words are out of his mouth, raises his hands. “I didn’t mean that. I’m just trying to say—”

“I know what you’re trying to say.” He can’t tell if the genuine concern on Carver’s face makes this better or worse. But he thinks of all the times Anders has said _maybe_ and never showed, and he asks, “Have you said anything to Anders about this?”

“Of course not,” Carver says, rolling his eyes skyward, as if _that’s_ the most ridiculous thing said in this conversation. “I don’t have to. Look at him. He knows he shouldn’t be around people, even if you don’t.”

Hawke opens his mouth, closes it again. “We’re done talking about this,” he says finally, through clenched teeth, and starts walking again.

Carver has to hurry to keep up, even with his longer legs. “I know it’s been rough without Father and Bethany, I know I can’t understand things like they could, but he’s not them. You can’t just latch onto the first—”

“That’s what you think this is about?” Hawke says, and would say more, but they’ve turned the corner to Gamlen’s place and Anders is standing at the foot of the stairs, and the argument stops dead.

His first thought is some half-thought-out joke about dinner. But then Anders is looking at him with such naked relief on his face that all Hawke can say is, “What’s wrong?”

Carver, mercifully, excuses himself, climbing up the stairs to the house. There’s a patch of blood drying on the sleeve of Anders’ coat, and Hawke thinks of that business with Lirene earlier, draws a conclusion, asks after Anders’ patient.

But Anders gives him a blank expression, until he follows Hawke’s glance toward the blood. “Oh. No, that’s—it’s not from a patient.” He scrubs at it with his thumb, only rubs it deeper into the worn fibers.

He should be used to a few bloodstains. Hawke reaches out, wraps his fingers on top of Anders’ until he stills.

“There’s going to be a lot more templar raids in the next few days,” Anders says. “I wanted to make sure you knew. You’ll have to keep your head down for a while.”

“What happened?”

Anders shakes his head, one corner of his lips quirking upward, apologetic. “Not really my secret to tell. I’m sorry.”

Well, it’s not as if he’s never turned up on Anders’ doorstep with his own bloodstains and secrets. “Fair enough. Thanks for the warning.” He’s already thinking of the job he’d lined up for tomorrow, the rumors Varric’s tracking down, rearranging schedules in his head; there’s a trip to Sundermount he’s been putting off, might be a good time for it. He almost misses the surprised look that crosses Anders’ face, there and gone.

“Thank you,” Anders says, and it’s so heartfelt that Hawke isn’t sure at first that he understands what he’s being thanked for. As if Anders had expected an interrogation. And he thinks of stories of the Circles, the complete lack of privacy; and it bothers him that Anders should sound so heartfelt over this.

“I don’t need to know the details. I trust you,” he says, and Anders is giving him that look, that particular smile with the crinkles around the eyes, that always makes him wonder how they haven’t done anything about this, whatever it is between them.

“Well,” Anders says. “Maybe _you_ do.” And he nods towards the house. “Not sure about your chaperone.”

Hawke turns to look, and finds Carver’s still leaning against the doorway, too far away to see clearly in the darkness. Maker’s sake. “Just keeping an eye out for whoever’s moving in on the old Sharps’ territory tonight,” he says. “Wouldn’t want us delicate mage flowers to have to fend for ourselves.”

From Anders’ amused smile, he’s not convinced. “Feels like being back at the Circle. Just makes me want to… do something I shouldn’t.” But he doesn’t, he doesn’t do anything, and he takes a deliberate step backwards before Hawke can take that as an invitation. “You really shouldn’t be seen with me tonight. I should go. You’ll be careful?”

“Aren’t I always?” Hawke shrugs. But that _you shouldn't be seen with me_ sounds uncomfortably similar to _he knows he shouldn't be around people_. “If you need a place to lie low, you’re always welcome here. You do know that, right? Ignore my brother. He does understand, even if he’s a bit of a shit about it.”

Anders shakes his head. “Another time,” he says.

And then he’s going, and Hawke’s watching him walk away, and it feels like he's been doing far too much of that.


	2. Act Two

Despite the warmth of Aveline’s office, she keeps her arms wrapped around herself like the chill of the Fade is still clinging to her. Their conversation has not gone at all the way Hawke had expected. He’d figured on getting the awkward apologies out of the way, the reassurances that what happened in the Fade didn’t mean anything, and then maybe they’d head over to the Wounded Coast, see if they could find some nice, straightforward bandits to kick around together.

He’s still expecting that right up until the moment she says, “If that’s what mages contend with… I’m less opposed to the Gallows.”

She meets his gaze squarely, as if this is a reasonable conversation about politics, about abstract issues, nothing personal.

“Should _I_ be locked up?” he says at last.

“I don’t know.”

Well. He can’t fault her for her honesty. He has the sudden urge to laugh, and doesn’t.

“Who could resist that?” she asks. “Anders didn’t, and seems quite proud of the fact. Merrill aches for some kind of bargain. It’s obvious. I'm left to think mages are either willful in a way I can't understand, or not mortal. I don't find either comforting.”

“Anders is different,” he says, automatic, and _Anders isn’t the one who turned on me_ , he almost says, but he doesn’t blame Aveline for that, not really. The thought of her turning on him in waking life is ludicrous. Or at least he’d thought it was, but now somehow she’s managed to twist things around so that _resisting_ demons is something to be frightened of, too, and he can practically hear Anders’ voice, the biting things he’d have to say about that— _we can’t win, can we?_

And while generally he enjoys watching Anders in a fury, he’s glad Anders isn’t here for this, with the way Aveline’s watching him, the set of her jaw, the challenge there.

Bandits would’ve been simpler.

So he fumbles for a way to put it to her, the Fade and the demons and the mages, so that they’re not all blending together into one big, dangerous unknown to be locked down, tries to keep the pleading note out of his voice—she’s seen him break a blood mage’s compulsion before, and that hadn’t seemed to bother her then. A demon isn’t that different. It’s like dreaming, like getting properly drunk; more inclined to make dangerously impulsive decisions—granted, he’s guilty of that while conscious and sober, too—but something that a person can get used to. If they have to.

She doesn’t look reassured by any of it, and Hawke wonders if this is how Anders feels whenever he tries to describe how his situation with Justice works, always ending in frustration.

He catches himself starting to talk in circles, as if repeating himself with a slightly different slant will make her say _oh, now I understand, never mind then, nothing to be afraid of here. All sounds perfectly safe now that you put it like that._

And maybe it’s not safe, but it is just a part of life, like bribes for the Carta, and bribes for the templars, and a friend in the guard who knows enough to lock him up several times over, in a cell or in the Gallows, she could take her pick.

“You get used to not trusting anything that seems too good to be true,” he says finally, and Aveline shakes her head.

“It sounds like a poor way to live.”

Which is true enough. But there are worse alternatives.

Outside her office, he leans against the wall, knocks the back of his head against it, ignores the curious looks of passing guardsmen. Someone’s left a sword sticking through the gut of one of the practice dummies. He can relate.

This is _Aveline_ , for Andraste’s sake. Even his dog likes her. There’s been times when she’s practically moved in to make sure the templars are kept off his doorstep, stopping by after every shift with an update on their movements, whenever the Knight-Commander decides to remind the city who’s in charge. She’s got his back. She always has. The Fade just has her frightened.

He doesn’t want to think about the number of mages locked in the Gallows because somebody got frightened.

* * *

There’s music in the air when he gets home, of a sort. And that distracts him from his thoughts, because while he’s used to the sound of his mother’s lute in the evenings, her old pastime picked up again now that she’s finally been able to replace the instrument left behind in Lothering, what he’s hearing now is—well, his mother always despaired of his complete lack of a musical ear, but he’s quite certain it’s not supposed to sound like this.

He finds his mother in the library with her back to the door, and his mother's lute in Anders’ hands. Anders is perched on the edge of a chair stolen from the writing desk and pulled over to the fireplace, in his shirtsleeves, bent over the instrument; his eyes are narrowed in concentration as a string refuses to sound, giving only a dull _plunk_ , and he readjusts the fingers of his left hand on the neck of the lute, repeats the motion, his right hand plucking one string at a time, slow and faltering.

It’s a simple and repetitive melody that goes along with a children’s rhyme, though it takes Hawke a moment to recognize it, and he dimly remembers working his way through that same simple sequence of notes years ago. The first song his mother had started him on in her attempts to get at least one of her children to develop a taste for music. She’d had somewhat more success with the twins than with him, but none of them had ever had her love for the lute.

He remembers those lessons as exacting, downright miserable at times, his mother as demanding in her own way as any of his father’s lessons on magic—and he thinks of the dinner party he’d escorted her to last week, the minstrel that had been hired for the occasion who’d sounded fine enough to him but who was distinctly lackluster according to his mother, unpolished, an embarrassment to listen to. It had hit him then, in a way that it never really had in Ferelden, the way she’d grown up with this, the salons and the Orlesian tutors. And as he watches Anders pick out each note, backtrack, start the whole sequence again, Hawke finds himself tensing up, mentally daring his mother to say one wrong word.

Anders comes to a halt and looks up, sees him standing in the doorway, and gives him a faint, sheepish grin; and his mother is smiling when she turns around.

And then at once she’s on her feet and exclaiming to him over how focused Anders is, such enthusiasm, the long reach of his fingers and the promise she sees in that with a bit of practice, a bit of stretching, some hand exercises will do him good anyway, what with all that time he spends clutching a pen. And before he knows it, he’s stifling a laugh while she’s sighing over their old feastday singing—an old tradition he hasn’t thought about since they were back in Ferelden, back when she’d insist the whole family end the night with holiday songs together, despite their limited musical talent. She’d reluctantly agreed to excuse Hawke from that little performance ever since his voice broke.

Of course, that had been around the same time his magic had first flared up. A lot of family traditions had changed that year. It had seemed a small thing.

“His father had such a lovely voice,” she’s saying in an aside to Anders, who’s put down the lute in favor of a half-full glass of wine which Hawke knows damn well might as well be grape juice to him, not a drink Anders ever chooses for himself. He’s smiling behind the glass.

Well, if Anders was looking for a way to get on his mother’s good side, it seems he’s found it.

Hawke says as much, later, after they’ve excused themselves, after he catches Anders’ wrist, says _hey_ , says hello properly, with one hand tangling in the hair at the nape of Anders’ neck; and maybe he’s got a bit of a goofy grin when they part, but Anders is no better. Hawke raises Anders’ left hand, rubs his thumb over the white lines where the strings of the lute had cut into his fingertips. Those fingers are already calloused from the grip of his staff, from grinding herbs for poultices, from washing linens for bandages and beds—and soon from lute strings, apparently.

“It was Justice’s idea, actually,” Anders says, looking at their joined hands, and Hawke wasn’t expecting that.

“It was Justice’s idea to get on my mother’s good side?”

Anders’ lips quirk upward and he gives Hawke a look. Silly question. He says, “When we were in the Fade, there was this music.”

“I didn’t hear anything.”

“No.” A trace of blue swirls across Anders’ eyes, there and gone again. Ah. Spirit thing, then. “But I saw a lute in Feynriel’s dream, and it made me think—made Justice think, if he could just let you hear that music too, hear the Fade like he does…” He shrugs. “But it’s beyond me.”

 _What, after one day?_ But though Anders’ tone is light, he holds himself stiffly, like he’s ready to pull away at any moment, the way he often does when talking about his other half. Likely because Hawke never seems to manage to make it through a conversation about Justice without saying something wrong, something to make Anders wince and protest, _it’s not like that, that’s not how it works_.

So he says, “Could you hum it?”

Anders gives him a bemused smile. “I… well, sort of, but I don’t think that would really… This isn’t too much?”

Still holding himself like he’s ready to pull away.

Justice has been running closer to the surface since the trip to the Fade, Hawke thinks; thinks he’s beginning to be able to tell the difference, tell how much of Anders comes from the spirit side of him, now that Hawke’s actually met Justice properly, seen what he’s like when he’s not busy smiting templars. He’d expected thunder and fury, but Justice had been surprisingly calm, formal even. Demons aside. And Hawke had recognized that formal style of speaking, heard a slightly watered down version from Anders more times than he can count, even without the glowing.

“I want to know you—all of you. However much you’re willing to share with me. I’m just glad your other half doesn’t think I’m just a distraction anymore.” Brief, irritated line between Anders’ brows there, for just a moment—Hawke’s said something that’s not quite right again, not quite how it works. Jumping straight from thinking he’s a distraction to wanting to serenade him seems like quite a leap, but he’ll take it. “Besides, you’re gorgeous like that.”

Anders shakes his head, leans in to close the inches between them, tilts his forehead against Hawke’s. “Love, you are definitely distracting. _Very_ distracting.” And with the way Anders is looking at him, it doesn’t sound like a bad thing to be.

He remembers what he’d said to Aveline, about mages and demons and learning not to trust anything that seems too good to be believed. But Maker, he wants to believe in this.


	3. Act Three

“I don’t believe you,” Carver says. “I didn’t see any templars.”

“Father says they’re coming,” Hawke says. “If you saw them, you’d be dead already.”

Carver’s still young enough to be carried on Hawke’s back, and he’s been switching off between each of the twins in turn; he can hear Bethany’s occasional sniffles as she trudges along two paces behind them, the dog hanging back at her side. There’s enough moonlight through the trees that they don’t stumble too often, though he’s given up on trying to move quietly. Fallen leaves crunch under his feet with every step.

Carver mutters something that’s muffled against Hawke’s shoulder, but his tone’s skeptical, and Hawke thinks of Ser Arlo at the village chantry, who’s always helping the sisters in the chantry garden and who never looks straight at Hawke, eyes always pointed vaguely over his shoulder. It’s difficult to imagine Ser Arlo killing anything livelier than a particularly stubborn weed.

If you run, they’ll cut you down, his father says. It just gives them an excuse to name you maleficar. But you still have to run.

“How does he know they’re coming?” Carver asks.

“I don’t know. I didn’t stop to ask.”

“So what if he’s wrong?”

His arms are getting tired, and he hitches his shoulders upward, shifting Carver’s weight. The meet-up point can’t be much further, and then hopefully there’ll be a cart for them all to ride in. Even if it means hiding under hay again.

“This,” Hawke says, “is why I’m the one in charge.” And because he’s the oldest. But the good sense helps. “You’d stand around arguing with him until the templars lock us all up.”

“Would not.” Sullen, muttered into his back. And not all the sniffling sounds are coming from Bethany.

“Don’t get snot on my shirt.”

“I’m not!”

Carver straightens up so quickly it throws Hawke off balance.

For a while, they walk in silence except for the crunch of leaves. And if his father is wrong, if his father got scared over nothing, then they really didn’t have to abandon everything again, and he’ll never know, because he didn’t check for himself.

“Maybe he’s summoning demons to kill the templars,” Carver says. “Maybe that’s the real reason we always split up.”

“That’s not funny.”

“You don’t know. He might. He summoned demons for the Wardens and never told you. He lied about not doing blood magic. He really was a maleficar, just like the templars said, and you had no idea. And you have no idea what else he lied about, because you just went along blindly with everything he asked of you. And now you’re making the same mistake all over again.”

Hawke lowers his arms, lets go, but that doesn’t have any effect on Carver’s voice at the back of his neck. Or the fear demon’s voice, rather. And this is a dream. He thinks he kind of knew that.

“I’m going to die rotting like Larius, and so is Anders, and he never would have told you if you hadn’t found out for yourself. Because you think trusting someone means being left in the dark and being fine with that.”

“See, this sort of thing is why you never see fear abominations,” Hawke says to the darkening dream scenery around them, looking around for some kind of boundary line. He’s never been able to get himself to wake up on command, but a change in scenes generally does the trick—doors, roads, property lines, anything to mark the shift between one space and another. “Now, desire, that’s understandable. Sloth, fair enough. But this? Whatever kind of pitch this is, the answer is no. I’m a one-spirit kind of guy.”

There’s a river in the distance. He heads for that, ignoring the chill spreading over his spine.

* * *

He’s alone when he wakes up, Anders’ side of the bed empty and cold, and that’s not really a surprise. His dreams don’t feature demons when Anders is around—or when Justice is around, probably more to the point. But there’s a sliver of light under the door which means he hasn’t gone far, and Hawke stretches out, burrows deeper under the sheets, weighs the benefits of trying to get back to sleep.

He belts on a robe instead.

At the top of the stairs, he leans on the railing. The high, stiff line of Anders’ shoulders is silhouetted against the light of the fireplace, and the dog’s lying next to him with his head on his paws and a mournful expression, which means he hasn’t managed to whine Anders into giving him a midnight snack he shouldn’t have. As Hawke watches, Anders feeds a stack of papers into the fire.

Anders doesn’t raise his head to look at him until Hawke’s standing at his side. He hasn’t bothered to tie back his hair, and his eyes are half hidden behind it.

The papers are already browning and curling inward, but there’s enough left for Hawke to make out the words of the manifesto. _The oppression of mages stems from the fears of men…_

No print house in the city would touch seditious materials, not now, with Meredith’s most recent ban; it had to be copied out by hand, over and over again, to keep it in circulation. And from the size of the stack of papers in the fire, Hawke is willing to bet that’s every copy they’ve got.

He could still snatch the papers from the fire, see how much could be salvaged. He’s done that before. But every hour put into the manifesto means another round of watching Anders find copies in gutters. And the way Anders shuts himself away and starts all over again is starting to feel less like optimism and more like the way Merrill looks at her mirror, like she’s trying to solve some private grief.

Hawke finds he doesn’t mind seeing it burn.

“I thought I’d managed to get up without waking you,” Anders says, voice pitched low, concerned.

“You didn’t wake me.” He shrugs, slides his arm around Anders’ waist, feels Anders relax a minuscule fraction. There’s a line of bare skin down Anders’ chest where his robe is hanging open, and Hawke wants to bury himself there and not have to think about manifestos or Meredith or maleficar or fear demons in his dreams. Instead he says, “That’s a lot of perfectly good paper you’re burning.”

“It’s a lot of time I’ve wasted.” His jaw works, clenches, but he doesn’t speak for a moment, just watches the pages curl. “The templars have more power now than ever. This was… fooling myself.”

The templars have more power than ever, and declaring a mage as Champion has done nothing to change that, despite Anders’ hopes. Anders doesn’t need to say that part out loud. Hawke’s well aware of it.

“No. You were just putting faith in people,” Hawke says. “This city doesn’t deserve you.”

Anders makes a noise in his throat that could be disagreement or could be a strangled sort of laugh. Hawke can’t remember the last time he heard Anders laugh.

He can feel the pressure of the Fade wrapped around Anders’ skin, a constant, and he’s not sure if it’s grown stronger or if he’s just grown more sensitive to it over the years. He can’t feel the darkspawn taint, but he knows that’s in there too, thinks of the refugees who’d lived in tents outside of Lothering during the Blight, the nervous looks every time a child so much as coughed. Thinks of Larius shuffling through the Deep Roads.

He closes his eyes, leans forward, presses his lips to the bare skin at the base of Anders’ neck.

“It’s too late for me to think about templars,” he says. “Or too early. Whatever time it is. I’m going to make tea. Do you want any tea?” Something with some of Orana’s herbs, something to put him to sleep without any dreams. And he pulls away, takes a step toward the stairs down to the kitchen, but Anders catches at him, holds him in place.

“I want more time,” he says, barely audible, burying his face against Hawke’s throat.


	4. Crossroads

Carver is the last to leave, parting at a crossroads just north of the Vimmarks where Hawke and Anders are turning toward Cumberland and its College of Magi, and the dog leaves with him.

Hawke has sent his dog off with sitters before, and for an imprinted mabari, he's always been happy enough to go along with it; always jumped up on Aveline to lick her face whenever she fetched him to chase recruits around the barracks for a week or so. But this is different, and he must sense something of that in Hawke despite the smile and encouragement. He stops every few paces to turn back and whine uncertainly, and this may be slightly less cruel than taking him on the run at his age, but it doesn't feel that way.

He’s been guarding Hawke’s back across twenty years and two countries now, ever since Hawke’s magic first showed, and he doesn’t move as fast as he used to. He deserves a happy retirement raiding the Wardens’ larder, not throwing himself at templars to buy Hawke and Anders some more time.

And Hawke’s never faced templars without his dog before, without his brother or Aveline or someone with a sword or a crossbow, someone who can hold them off when a holy smite sends Hawke reeling.

He tries not to think about that. He’ll manage somehow.

There’s a deer path that runs just about parallel to the road for a while, and it’s narrow and meandering but easier than walking through underbrush, infinitely safer than the road itself. Anders talks about Vigil’s Keep, about Ser Pounce-a-lot lazing in the sun and patrolling the rooftops, and all the Wardens spoiling the cat with scraps from dinner and scritches behind the ears. It helps. And he talks about introducing the concept of pets to Justice, and that distracts Hawke for a while, listening to a time where Anders’ two sets of memories overlap.

Anders leaves out the part about how the Wardens eventually took Pounce away, and Hawke doesn’t mention it, just listens to the rhythm of his voice as they walk.

Varric will be telling stories right around now too, Hawke figures; halfway back to Kirkwall and concocting tales to keep the templars pointed in the wrong direction every step of the way, same as always. And it seems quiet with just his and Anders’ voices, just their footsteps along the path, but this is all right too. He can get used to this.

The moons are full and bright enough that they keep moving after evening closes in, though they've long since lost any kind of path. And while they're picking their way over layers of old years’ leaves, Hawke has an uncomfortable sense of déjà vu, remembering a dream he’d had not long ago—or a lifetime ago, for all the things that have changed in between.

A dog starts barking in the distance, and for a moment, it all feels unreal; for a moment, he's certain his dog’s slipped away from Carver’s camp and found his way back to Hawke. Even though it’s the wrong bark. And now that he’s looking up instead of at where he’s putting his feet, he can see the side of a building through a break in the trees up ahead, much too close.

“Who’s out there?” a man’s voice calls, harsh.

Though Hawke backs away from the opening in the trees, he looks to Anders and finds he’s already readying his staff. Hawke follows suit. Just in case.

The speaker comes into sight then, a young man holding onto a dog’s collar—not a mabari, but a shaggy, black-furred sheepdog. He raises a lantern in his other hand, and the light falls onto Hawke’s face, blinding after the darkness of the woods. As Hawke raises a hand against the brightness, he means to apologize, to say they were just passing through, they’ll leave; but the man speaks first, disbelieving.

“Messere Hawke?”

The lantern’s light briefly swings away, then right back onto Hawke.

“And the healer—what—? Is it true, then? What they’re saying about Kirkwall?”

“That depends on what they’re saying.” Hawke squints, tries to make out who he’s speaking to. “Could you—”

“Oh. Sorry, didn't mean to blind you.” The man lowers the lantern, and the dog at his side sits down, looks back and forth between them. Hawke doesn't know him, but he’s gotten used to strangers knowing him on sight—though he hadn’t expected that to be an issue this far from Kirkwall, and without the distinctive armor of the Champion. But the man introduces himself as Pryce, and he follows that with “I don't expect you remember me, messere,” which Hawke doesn't, but then he's never been particularly good with faces.

Pryce explains he used to work for Athenril, just after Hawke left. “Up until you gave me the money to get out. Wouldn’t have this job here if it weren’t for you.” He pats the sheepdog fondly as he says it.

And that sounds vaguely familiar, but Anders is the one who says, “Wait, I do know you. From the refugee camp. Your sister brought you by the clinic a few times.”

“That’s right.” And now that he mentions it, Hawke can hear the remnants of a Fereldan accent, just faintly. “Thing is, we’ve had templars through here a few days ago, warning about a bunch of Circle runaways and—well, about you, Messere Hawke.” He looks sheepish, but keeps going. “And the farm down the way had some trouble with someone stealing eggs, so—”

“So you’re patrolling for escaped mages?” Hawke looks around, behind Pryce. He’s alone aside from the dog; no one has come running to help. “What were you planning on doing when you found one?”

“Well—shout a bit, scare them off. Never had any trouble with them before. And the templars just said not to try to corner them, so it should be all right. Same as any animal, really.”

Hawke reaches out automatically to put a hand on Anders’ wrist.

Pryce stops himself then. “Oh—not meaning you, messere. Messeres.” He hesitates. “The ones like in the Gallows, I meant. Don’t think they know which way is up, half the time.”

He stops again, blanches. Hawke follows his gaze, glances at Anders, who isn't doing anything in particular.

Pryce clears his throat, starts again. “Do you need a place to stay the night, Messere Hawke? We’ve got plenty of room. And you look—well, we’ve got plenty of room.”

Whatever Pryce has heard about Hawke and what happened Kirkwall, it doesn't sound like he's aware of the extent of the trouble he's inviting; and he's made no mention of Anders’ role in it at all. Hawke thinks of the things the templars did to people caught sheltering a mage in Kirkwall, even before this mess. “No, we should go," he says. "And it would be better if you didn’t know we were here.”

Pryce catches his meaning quickly, but frowns, looking between him and Anders and back to the house. “But I can’t just—I’ve always wanted to pay you back for helping me like you did. You changed my life. It doesn’t feel right to just—you look like you’re about to fall over.” Hawke hadn’t thought they looked _that_ bad. “Let me bring you something to eat, at least. If you won't let me take you up to the house, there's the barn. Maybe you broke in. I don't have to know you were ever there.”

Hawke exchanges a look with Anders, who shrugs. And they haven’t caught anything to eat yet today—though the catching part is easy enough with a bit of paralysis or sleep magic, that still requires actually finding the animal first. Neither of them have proven to have much luck with that. They'd always trusted that part to his dog.

Pryce’s dog noses at Hawke then, apparently having accepted that the strangers aren’t a threat after all, and Hawke crouches down on one knee, holds out a hand. The sheepdog sniffs once more, then leans into his fingers, letting Hawke pat beneath his chin.

* * *

The farm’s larger than Hawke had realized at first. Reminds him of some of the places his father had worked at as a hired hand, before they’d started farming on their own, and long before his magic first flared up. They’d lived on one so large there’d been a separate building just for the farmhands and their families, though only two of the other farmhands had families to bring along. Still, there’d always been people around, a temporary extended family. His memories of it are dim, and this isn’t quite the same, the shape of the buildings, the thatching of the roofs different here than in Ferelden, but it feels familiar.

Getting to the barn means circling around the edge of the property, past the cattle shed, but the cattle don’t rouse as they pass, and the main house remains quiet and dark. Hawke wonders how much Pryce plans on telling the people in the house, wonders if he's planning on telling them anything.

Pryce brings them a small basin for washing, and he brings cheese and bread with nuts and bits of apple baked in, with apologies for not being able to get more. They sit around the barn’s threshing floor, the sheepdog lying patiently at Pryce’s feet, and as they eat, Pryce talks a little about the sister Anders had mentioned—married two years now and living with a baker in Starkhaven—and the sister still living here with him, and he thanks Hawke again for getting him away from Athenril. But the subject quickly shifts to Kirkwall. Apparently either Hawke or Meredith or the mages had gone mad, or maybe all of them had, and at least one eye witness's cousin swore Anders had summoned a dragon to attack the chantry.

“A dragon,” Anders mutters. Hawke shoots him a look. And he means it for a reminder to be careful what they say; but Anders isn’t looking at him, and Hawke sees him take a slow breath, visible, a rise and fall of his chest, and suddenly the dragon story isn't funny, and he doesn't want Anders to hear any of this. They might need to know, but he doesn't want Anders to hear it.

But Anders looks back then, steady, and Pryce is still talking.

They correct some of what he’s heard. Not all. A fair amount of it’s right, or close enough. The crucial details are there: the lone mage at the chantry, the Annulment. Pryce doesn’t seem to have connected the darktown healer with _the mad mage Anders_ , and Hawke leans against Anders’ shoulder and doesn’t bother clarifying that.

The version of events Pryce heard from the templars played up Meredith’s madness more than anything else, which both is and isn’t surprising; she’s already dead, and it’s easy for them to let her take the blame for it all, pretend the rest of the Order is blameless.

“It’s Alrik all over again,” Anders says after Pryce leaves them to settle in for the night. He rubs at his forehead as if he’s got a headache.

“Does it make much difference? Let them blame it all on her. A knight-commander gone mad, allowed to run the city for years. Doesn’t exactly reflect well on the Chantry.” Anders makes a noncommittal noise, and Hawke threads his fingers through the hair at the back of Anders’ neck, petting softly. “Anyway, that’s what we’ve got Varric for. To set the record straight.”

Well. Straight-ish. The dragon sounded like something straight out of one of Varric’s stories; shame he hadn’t been there to hear it.

Though on second thought, Varric probably wouldn't have found it funny either.

Anders catches Hawke’s hand, briefly presses it to his lips instead. Then he lets go, stands and goes to the closed doors, and a violet glow lights up his profile as he starts tracing glyphs over the floor, setting up wards as if they were in camp.

Hawke watches Anders work for a moment before getting up himself, laying out the bedrolls. He’s never been any good at glyphs. Too many fiddly details. “Do you think Pryce just wanted to keep us here while he goes for the templars?”

He could have alerted someone in the house while he was getting the food, sat around talking to buy some time; the templars could already be on their way. There might even be a reward in it.

“Not really. Always the chance, but—” Anders finishes the glyph and straightens, moves to the back door, beside the threshing flails. “You changed his life, _Messere Hawke_.” There’s a smile playing about his lips as he traces a second set of glyphs. “You have that effect on people.”

And it’s strange to hear that from him, now, here. _Changing lives_.

The scent of old wood and grain and straw, the ache in his legs after walking all day—it feels like being twelve years old again, hiding and waiting for the templars to take him. Like the years in Kirkwall never happened. Though he knows that illusion can't last.

Everything's going to change now—the whole world is going to change. It has to. One way or another.

That never felt quite real, before.

He hears Anders’ footsteps on the floorboard behind him, and then there’s Anders’ arms around him, so tight that it startles him, a hand fisting in his shirt. And there’s a jagged crack of blue between thumb and forefinger.

Hawke reaches up to fold his own hand over Anders’, traces that blue line, an unspoken question in it.

“You’re still here,” Anders says against Hawke’s shoulder.

“Yeah.” He waits for more, and the line splinters under his touch, branches into two, cold as metal against his skin. He wishes again that Anders hadn’t heard any of Pryce’s stories.

“Your blighted _dog_ , love…”

Hawke breathes out. “Yeah,” he agrees.

He feels Anders’ lips move, soundlessly this time, and maybe there are words in that or maybe there aren’t. But Hawke watches that blue spread and shrink again, and he thinks of how Anders manages to trust his safety to near-strangers like Pryce, like half of Darktown; manages to trust that the world can change for the better if given enough of a shove; and yet he’s still been bracing for the moment when Hawke’s not there. By Hawke’s own choice or otherwise. Three years, always conscious of the tightrope walk between the nobles and Meredith and the knowledge that gratitude only went so far; that if even the Hero of River Dane could end up executed as a traitor, there was no guarantee an apostate Champion wouldn’t go the same way, once the novelty wore off.

Hawke beat them to the punch on that one, he supposes.

“The things they’re saying about you—” Anders says then, and Hawke doesn't let him finish.

“I’m not going anywhere.”

Anders’ grip tightens, just for a moment, and Hawke feels him shake his head, a puff of breath. “I know.”

* * *

They sleep tangled up as tightly as when they first got together.

It’s the bird chatter that wakes Hawke, different than the familiar city noises, different even than the sounds up in the Vimmark Mountains that he'd just started to get used to. It looks too dark to be morning, but the birds know better. And if the birds are up, people will be up soon, if they’re not already; and if people are up, then it’s time for the two of them to go, if they’re going to leave Pryce and the rest of the household any plausible deniability.

Anders has Hawke’s forearm held close against his chest, curled around it like Hawke might vanish if he lets go. When Hawke spreads his fingers, he can feel the sunken line of scar tissue over Anders' heart, the one with a matching ridge on Anders’ back.

Anders grew up on a farm too, it occurs to him, and he wonders whether this place feels as vaguely familiar to him as it does to Hawke. Anders has never said much beyond the simple fact of it, just enough to imply that he still remembers what it was like, life before magic. But when Hawke’s magic first flared up, his father had come home with a mabari. Anders’ brought templars. And the Wardens gave him a cat and then took it away again, gave him freedom from the Circle and then posted a templar to watch him. And in the Circle, nothing was truly his, nothing that couldn’t be taken. And in the Fade, everything can be erased in an instant, as if it never was. The same lesson ingrained into every side of him.

And Hawke has no idea how he can begin to outweigh all that. He’s had Anders for three years—six, depending on how he counts. The Circle's had him for half his life.

He shifts closer until he can feel the hum of Anders’ magic around his skin. Most days it’s like a contained storm under Anders’ ribs, but it’s quiet now. Still present, palpable, just not straining at the edges. Hawke tilts his head forward, breathing in that quiet sense of him, until Anders stretches, resettles, hugs his forearm closer.

“Morning,” Hawke says softly.

“Mm,” Anders agrees. On the far side of the room, the light of his wards flares and vanishes. “Morning, and still no templars.”

And they should go. But there's a smile in Anders' voice, and the templars didn't come for them in the night after all, and they're both still here.

It's a start.


End file.
